This book is primarily historical in nature because the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) of CIA has virtually ceased to be a viable institution. The Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has subsumed its most important missions and will no doubt absorb whatever remains of its role as an all source intelligence producer. Still the book provides one of the best and most accurate descriptions of the actual process of producing policy level intelligence as it was practiced within the DI and probably continues to be practiced with the ODNI. The fact that this process was badly flawed probably means as little to the managers in ODNI as it did to DI managers.
The thrust of Gentry's argument is that over the years poor overall management practices allowed a dysfunctional process for intelligence analysis and production to take hold in which objectivity and target knowledge took third place to a smooth functioning of bureaucratic processes and superficial appearances. A rewards system for analysts based on the hoary "go along to get along" credo that permeates the entire intelligence community further eroded the ability of DI to produce good intelligence. Gentry focuses on a poorly designed and inefficient product review system as central to this problem.
Thus when now Secretary of Defense Bob Gates came along in the 1980's to become Director of DI he found an organization already running on near empty. He implemented a number of reforms to speed up the review process and to tighten up reporting standards. Unfortunately the reforms that Gates implemented, at least according to Gentry, were designed to bring DI reporting into line with the often ill-informed views of his boss and patron William Casey (Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)). In this account it was Gates who institutionalized the trend already in place at DI to make its findings politically correct. This `politicization' of intelligence and the growth of bureaucratic expediency into a standard management practice in Gentry's view was the final nail in DI's coffin.
Now Gentry notes that CIA's performance in Operation Desert Storm to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait was widely criticized by the military. Undoubtedly this criticism was an important factor in the demise of DI. Not long after this book was written the Office of Imagery Analysis was removed from DI and made into an independent agency under DOD (National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency as it is now known). This was the first nail in DI's coffin.
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